He was referring to the surge in analytical analysis that has taught us a lot about football in recent years. Like analytics in baseball, one cannot field a team based on those numbers alone. Football is even more fickle in that sense.

Still, some numbers can offer valuable insight, even if they can't tell us the whole story.

For example, before the NFL Draft, the fine folks at Football Outsiders projected NFL production for the quarterbacks in the class using their Lewin Career Forecast model, which takes into account career college games started, career completion rate (equipped with a sliding scale which penalizes the quarterback for a drop in percentage), the quarterback's Body Mass Index, the difference between junior and senior season passer ratings, a run-pass ratio and total rushing yards.

Quarterbacks get a number that estimates their Defense-Adjusted Yards Above Replacement in years 3-5 of their career. The best quarterbacks score above 1,200.

1. This metric predicted an unproductive pro career for Matt Leinart, a first round draft pick in 2006, and was also cold on Mark Sanchez. It also spit out a mammoth score for Russell Wilson, who last season led the Seattle Seahawks to the postseason as a rookie.

2. This metric also predicted a massive success for Colt McCoy and Brady Quinn -- which hasn't been the case to this point in their careers.

Smith has endured a heavy amount of criticism in the past few weeks. And yes, there are now a few well-known reasons why he stumbled out of the first round of the draft. This is not meant to say those scouts or league executives are incorrect. It's just another way to look at things.

while Tannehill may be a more raw talent than Weeden, and he wasn't as

accurate as Weeden in college, he has far more potential. The LCF

doesn't know that Weeden will turn 29 in the middle of his rookie

season. When John Beck came into the league as an overaged prospect, he

had 12 more games of starting experience than Weeden has and was three years younger.

Brock Osweiler, Arizona State: 248 DYAR

Important stats: 14 games started, 60.3% completion rate.

The LCF likes this year's quarterback prospects, with one exception: Brock Osweiler.

Osweiler is built for LCF to hate. He has a low completion rate and

only started one season in college (along with a single game in each of

his first two seasons) before coming out for the draft early. LCF

doesn't ding him for this, but there also need to be concerns about his

height. He was listed at 6-foot-8 during the season, although he

measured 6-foot-7 at the combine. Either way, he's taller than any

quarterback in the LCF data set. The FO master database lists only two

quarterbacks since 1992 who were at least 6-foot-7: Ryan Mallett and Dan McGwire. Dan McGwire also had very few games started (23) and a low completion rate (59.1 percent). You don't want to be compared to Dan McGwire.

I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the ridiculous projection that the Lewin Career Forecast spits out for Russell Wilson. Yes, that projection is even higher than the one for Robert Griffin.

No, it doesn't particularly mean that Wilson is a sleeper prospect.

There are a few things going on here that the LCF is just not designed

to account for.

First and foremost, the change in Wilson's passer rating between his

junior and senior years is insane. Remember that earlier I noted that

Griffin had a larger senior year passer rating increase than any

quarterback in our data set? Well, Wilson's senior year passer rating

increase is 40 percent larger than Griffin's. But does it matter when

the quarterback is playing in a completely different offense for a

completely different school in his last year of college eligibility? At

Wisconsin, Wilson got to pick apart defenses that were concentrating on

stopping Montee Ball. At North Carolina State, I doubt opponents were

quaking in their boots at the thought of Mustafa Greene and Dean Haynes.

It goes without saying that there isn't another quarterback in the LCF

data set who transferred between his junior and senior years.

There's also the issue of height, another data point where there's

nobody in our data set that can be compared to Wilson. At first, it

seems strange that LCF doesn't include a variable to discount short

quarterbacks, but when you look at the data set that went into creating

LCF the reasons are pretty clear. There's no penalty for being

5-foot-11, like Wilson is, because there are no quarterbacks in the data

set who are shorter than 6-foot-0. There's no penalty for being only

6-foot-0 because the two quarterbacks who are 6-foot-0 are Drew Brees and Michael Vick.

Quarterbacks who are Wilson's height simply don't get drafted in the

first three rounds of the draft, period. The FO master database only

includes three quarterbacks who are below six feet tall: Seneca Wallace,

Joe Hamilton, and Flutie. That's a fourth-round pick, a seventh-round

pick, and an 11th round pick from 25 years ago. Even if we go all the way back